A Quantum Mythology by Gavin G. Smith Page B

had been dryw there, brown-robed, leaning on staffs, hoods masking their features. Fachtna was there, too – she had seen his face illuminated by the light they’d caged her in. He had looked sad. Then they had killed her.
    She looked up. The light was faint, the grey light of the time-between-times, dusk or dawn. She stood up. It was only then she came to realise that she was in a massive cauldron. She wondered if they were planning to eat her, but it would be a poor meal. Then she remembered the magic of men, the metalworkers. How the rounded belly of a cauldron was supposed to be the stomach of a pregnant woman.
    She reached up and felt the cauldron’s lip. She was not nearly as strong as she had been, but she managed to pull herself up over the lip and all but fell onto wooden boards.
    Painfully she stood up and looked around. She was in a large wooden long hall any rhi could be proud of, though why they had covered good earth with wood was beyond her. The walls were ornately carved and stained with bright, vibrant colours. She saw knotwork, spirals, shapes she recognised as women and men, animals, chariots and curraghs , and other things that she did not recognise or understand.
    The cauldron was a massive bronze vessel with little external decoration. It had two handles on either side, though only a giant would have been able to lift it. She shivered at the momentary reminder of the giants that had walked and fought alongside the Lochlannach. No fire had been set beneath the cauldron. In fact, it looked as if the bottom of the cauldron had been sunk into the earth beneath the boards of the long hall.
    There was no source of light in the hall. Her guess was wrong – it was neither dawn nor dusk, for bright sunlight shone through cracks and gaps in the wood. She made her way towards the hall’s double doors. She felt very unsteady, and more than once her legs went from underneath her, but she made it to the doors.
    Vertiginous fear overwhelmed her. Things were not as they should be.
    She collapsed to the floor, desperately trying to make sense of what she could see. Then she remembered where she was. Then she remembered coming to the Otherworld.
    Britha collapsed onto the warm, slightly damp, lush green grass outside the hall. She clung to the ground expecting to fall into the sky. The land was enormous, too big to take in properly, and she could see so much of it – farmed fields, thick forest, mountains, rivers, lochs, even seas and, beyond the seas, other lands. Mists and cloud obscured some of the places in the distance but it went on as far as she could see, and she imagined it went much further than that.
    There was no horizon. The ground curved up, so she found herself looking down at blue sky, and so much of it. Perhaps more than her mind could cope with. Above/below her, the sky was bright blue, but from where she clung to the ground she could see patches of dark sky obscured by thundery-looking clouds in the distance. Even further away she was sure a land across one of the seas looked white in colour. It was as if she stood on the inside of a sealed giant cauldron.
    There were things in the sky, hanging there, floating. Rocks, strange round plants or trees, distant spheres that looked like they might also have land on them. Closer, but still too far off to make out what they were, she perceived smaller objects that moved more erratically than the sedate floating rocks and trees. The few birds she could see looked very different from the birds she knew in her realm.
    Despite all the strangeness, it was the Otherworld’s sun that caught her attention. It was not that different from the sun she knew, except it looked much, much larger, and closer. She could feel its warmth. Few summers in Ardestie had been this warm. Sweat started to bead on her skin.
    She had to force herself to let go of the grass, though instinct told her that if she did so she would fall into the sun. Looking around, she could see that